Chrome OS Help

In anticipation of everyone getting new Chromebooks over the next couple of weeks, Google has made their Chrome OS page public.  Previously, this page was reached by those of us with CzR-48's by pressing the Help item in the wrench menu.  The page has changed a little bit to reflect the new name Chromebook instead of CR-48 and a few additions.

Check it out here:
Chrome OS Help

Samsung Chromebook: Hands-On Visual Tour -- InformationWeek

The first look at the new Samsung Chromebook.  Pretty sweet looking piece of tech.  I still think they're a little overpriced though.  I though Chrome OS based netbooks would come in at about the $200 price mark.  While the Samsung entry is pretty sleek (can you say Mac-book like?), I don't think the higher price($500) is justified.

We'll see what the market will support.  In the mean time, head over here to take a look at the pretty pictures:

Samsung Chromebook: Hands-On Visual Tour -- InformationWeek

Chrome OS 12 — AKA: The Shipping Version — Hits Beta

Chrome OS version 0.12.433.38, which is essentially the version that is expected to become the stable channel version, recently was promoted to the Beta channel.  Read this article at TechCrunch to see their opinion:


Chrome OS 12 — AKA: The Shipping Version — Hits Beta

Next-gen Chrome OS build hits Google's Cr-48 notebooks - Computerworld Blogs

As I've mentioned before, I'm on the development channel which has had the changes mentioned in this Computerworld Blog, but this article is a nice synopsis of what was rolled onto the Beta channel over the weekend.  Getting very close to a stable channel release, I would think.

Next-gen Chrome OS build hits Google's Cr-48 notebooks - Computerworld Blogs

Five Reasons why Google's Linux Chromebook is a Windows killer | ZDNet

Another very good article on why the Chromebook is a great platform, and how it fits into the enterprise:

Five Reasons why Google's Linux Chromebook is a Windows killer | ZDNet

Why Chromebooks do have a role in your enterprise - JavaWorld

Now that the Chrome OS pilot program has been in existence for about 6 months, news of Chromebook releases from Samsung and Acer were announced at Google I/O 2011, and the technical press has been filled with reviews and opinions about the necessity of such machines.  As readers of my blog know, I'm a big fan of Chrome OS and my CR-48.  I have 2 laptops, a netbook, a MacBook and my CR-48 in the house, in addition to 2 desktop machines, and I use my CR-48 almost exclusively.  I think that the ability to use this machine as much as I do is a testament to the fact that most people use the internet primarily, and other, non-internet functions are secondary.  There are those who claim that the Chromebook becomes a paper weight as soon as you loose internet connectivity, but by the time these machines hit the market, I believe that Google will have the off-line capabilities ready to go, or very nearly so.  And what this means is that you can continue to work on your documents and email until you reconnect to the net, at which time the work you have done syncs to the cloud.  Read the following article from JavaWorld to get their take on the Chromebooks fit in the enterprise.

Why Chromebooks do have a role in your enterprise - JavaWorld

New Update in Developer Channel Cures Some Ills

Image via WikipediaLast night (2/10), a new developer channel update was pushed to my CR-48.  That would be the second update this week (gotta love the development channel) and it has fixed my major complaints with the last update that I wrote about on Monday (2/7).  But don't get me wrong, it wasn't real evident at first. Here's why:
The update downloaded and installed, at which point I restarted the CR-48.  First thing I did is check out Google Docs and a couple of other sites that were causing me problems since the last upgrade.  Everything seemed to be working flawlessly again.  So, I started Grooveshark, and lo and behold, still no music.  Very disappointing as this is one of the reasons I love the CR-48.  Having a machine that plays my music while I work is very important.  So, I thought I'd also checkout the webcam functionality which has been borked since the last update, and it also was still non-functioning.  Okay, I thought.  Wait for the next upgrade.
This morning I'm checking out a couple of Chrome OS forums, and I see that someone has started a thread about the update from last night.  And there in that posting is the answer I was looking for!  In the about:plugins page (which I only visited briefly when I first got the CR-48) you can look at the details of the plugins by clicking the Details link.  This shows that there are two versions of the Shockwave Flash plugin installed: 10.1 and 10.2. The poster in the forum said that to enable media and web cam and all sorts of other things that were broken in the last update that you only needed to enable the 10.2 plugin and disable the 10.1 plugin.  I did this and found that everything I was missing was now fixed.
Flash sites seem faster, music plays from sites like Grooveshark, Hulu works again, and the web cam and microphone are working again from Flash sites.
Gotta love the development channel!

Related articles

• Switching to the Dev Channel in Chrome OS (thechromesource.com)

New Development Channel Update Brings Some Misery

I mentioned in a previous post that there was a new update available on the developer channel. Problem is, there's problems there.
This version of the OS brings problems with media content.  MP3's no longer play.  Grooveshark music displays a "Cannot play" message for all music.  Some video content will not play.  (I found I can still view hulu content.)
All of the flags in the about:flags page have been reset to the defaults, so you have to go in and change things back to whatever you had them set to previously.  So, for instance, if you had enabled advanced file system support so that you can read your usb and sd drives, you will need to reenable it.
You can now drag and drop the app icons around in the new window views to customize that view.  And the sync settings now come up in their own dialog from the settings window.
I've also noticed that I'm getting crashes more frequently.  The good news is that whereas these crashes used to take down all of my tabs, it is now confined to the tab that causes the exception.
So, while there are a couple of pluses in this last update, the loss of the ability to play different media files is a big buzz-kill.  Hopefully, Google follows this release up pretty quickly with something that works a little better!

The Developer Channel

Image via WikipediaA couple of days ago I made the decision to run my CR-48 on the developer channel as opposed to the beta channel.  I know that you run the risk of more bugs in the developer channel, but I was anxious to see how the extended file system worked.
So I made the switch and immediately downloaded the developer version of Chrome OS for the CR-48 and found that the extended file system worked well for the USB flash drives and SD cards I inserted.The built-in file browser pops up and displays the contents of the flash drive and clicking on a file in the browser displays it appropriately in the browser window.  Nice job Google.
But that wasn't all.  Last night there was an update available for the developer channel.  I installed that one also (actually, it kind of happens automatically), but I'm not sure what's changed in this version. The trackpad seems to be more responsive. And some of the fonts seems sharper, but that's kind of a subjective observation.

I'll poke around and see if I can find out what might have changed in the latest version of the developer channel.  Love the CR-48.  It's everything I hoped it would be so far!

Here's a screen shot of the current versions installed on my CR-48:

Related articles

• Switching to the Dev Channel in Chrome OS (thechromesource.com)
• Chrome OS Dev Update Brings File System Support, More Experiments (thechromesource.com)